We received a call at 5:44am from our security company alerting us of our motion detectors going off in our Skydome area of the Museum. Upon arrival it was discovered that a sinkhole had collapsed within the Museum. No one was in or around the Museum at the time. The Bowling Green Fire Department arrived on the scene and secured the area. The Fire Department has estimated the size of the hole is 40 feet across and 25-30 feet deep.

It is with heavy hearts that we report that eight Corvettes were affected by this incident. Those cars include:

1993 ZR-1 Spyder on loan from General Motors
2009 ZR1 “Blue Devil” on loan from General Motors


The other six vehicles were owned by the National Corvette Museum including:

1962 Black Corvette
1984 PPG Pace Car
1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette
1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette
2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette
2009 White 1.5 Millionth Corvette


None of the cars affected were on loan from individuals. The Skydome exhibit area of the Museum is a separate structure connected to the main Museum. A structural engineer is now on-site to assess the existing damage and stability of the surrounding areas. The Museum is closed to the public for the day to allow us to carefully assess the situation. We will keep everyone informed as we know more.

With the 20th Anniversary celebration, Grand Opening of the NCM Motorsports Park, and the National Corvette Caravan coming August 27-30, we’ve got a lot to be excited about in 2014, and look forward to getting the Skydome repaired and reopened very soon.

The National Corvette Museum is the ‘Gateway to All Things Corvette’ and a member-driven, 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation. Weekly news on the latest Corvette developments, racing updates, event features and raffles are available by subscribing to “NCM eNews” at: corvettemuseum.org/ncmenews. Dedicated to the mission of celebration, education and preservation, the Museum is open seven days a week, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. CT - located at Exit 28 on I-65 in Bowling Green, KY.

Its really a pretty sad sight. I've been down there a few times, it is a really nice museum.. I'm glad no one was hurt when the sinkhole gave in.

Some interesting footage of the sinkhole forming via webcam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IukDWhf7 ... 12km1LzacC

And a pretty good use of Drone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hypidVK9 ... 4-overview

Miner Greg

[EDITED - Fixed bad link for Drone Video]

Yea, how bout that! That's too bad about those historic cars! Eric S sent me that story, crazy!

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I hope they are able to retrieve the cars. How would they do it?

I fixed the bad link for the Drone video. There are a bunch of Drone videos on YouTube, I thought this was the better one which goes into the sink hole.

Supposedly they got all of the Corvettes which surround the hole out of this area of the museum. They put them on wheel castors and pushed them out. Therefore no more Corvettes should fall into the hole should it expand. As for the cars which fell into the hole, they are planning on extracting all of them. A few of them don't look too badly damaged, especially the 1962. The big thing is that many of these cars are one off's, like the millionth Corvette built and the 1.5 millionth Corvette built. So safely removing them is key. I'll post some more photos up..

Miner Greg

Good thing this happend to just stupid cars, and it didnt happen at an airplane museum

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This ain't longwall... this is long hole!